PhilosophyTalks

The BC Philosophy Department is happy to announce (a bit late this quarter) our continuation of BC’s quarterly Philosophy Talks series. These brief, informal presentations highlight a philosophical approach to classic and contemporary issues. Presentations are free and open to anyone in or associated with the BC com, as well as to BC classes.

You are invited to the BC Philosophy Department’s third Winter Quarter presentation of Philosophy Talks. Our focus this time will be on the philosophy of non-violence as a means of advancing social justice, and as articulated by Mexican-American Cesar Chavez.

Chavez was a dynamic power in pressuring corporate farmers in California and beyond to provide improvement in pay to field workers, respect for female farm employees, and safety for workers against pesticides and herbicides. While many thoughtful and not so thoughtful activists urged violence, Chavez argued that non-violence was both morally and pragmatically required. Storey will provide a brief introduction to how Chavez’s position on non-violence contrasts tellingly with activists like Ward Churchill, Che Guevara, Franz Fanon, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Archives

“TAKIN’ IT TO THE STREETS: BIKE / BUS ACTIVISM”

Deric Green et al

Tuesday, March 18, 2014 10:30-11:20

Gruen will facilitate a panel discussion addressing how Critical Mass and other groups have used civic action to advance social change regarding urban transportation.

Storey will present a position outlining the moral concerns of non-violent civil disobedience as articulated by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, and John Rawls.

CYBORG FEMINIST ETHICS by Zoe Aleshire

Tuesday, November 26, 2013 | 11:30-1:30 | at the LMC Event Center

Wed. Nov. 6, 2013 at 10:30 in the LMC Event Center (D106). This time we bring you our own STEVE DUNCAN who will address the highly influential John Dewey.

While this talk will be appropriately accessible for students, it is especially apt for BC faculty and administrators. John Dewey has shaped the character of education as we know and practice it as much as anyone over the past century. This talk will be an opportunity for educators to critically reflect on why we teach the way we teach.

Monday, November 4, 2013 at 11:30 in the LMC Event Center (D106).

Join us for our first Philosophy Talk of the academic year

The presenter,Greg Damico, promises us a truly accessible talk on Aristotle. Sounds like a feat and a treat. All are welcome as always. Here is the abstract:

ARISTOTLE ON DIFFERENT WAYS OF BEING THE SAME:

Aristotle speaks freely about different notions of sameness that he employs throughout the corpus. You and I are the same _in species_, for example, since we are both human beings, whereas a man and a dog are the same only _in genus_, since they are both animals. A more troublesome notion is sameness _in number_. This sure sounds like our modern notion of (numerical) identity, but the trouble with such an interpretation is that Aristotle seems to have yet another notion of sameness that is even _narrower_ than sameness in number–something he calls sameness “in being”. Thus Aristotle will sometimes–and often as a way of solving various puzzles–describe things as “one in number but two in being”. I set this all out and then briefly discuss how we might interpret our way out of these textual difficulties.